The FilterPak is downloadable software that provides Internet filtering for your home. It works with your current Internet connection and communicates with our database servers in the background using a small software program. Upon installation of the filtering, this “thin-client” is placed on your computer, where it operates in the background of the system, much like a virus protection program.

The “thin-client” works in concert with the list server by forcing all URL requests to compare against the blocked site list before allowing or disallowing the end-user to view the site. Since this check is simply the comparison of strings of text, it takes a mere fraction of a second to complete.

The FilterPak has 23 categories of filtering and each user can have different filtering levels. The FilterPak cannot be modified or uninstalled except by the administrator of the account, which has full administrative control. This type of security ensures that users cannot bypass the filter.

The FilterPak relies largely on a massive list of categorized websites to provide content filtering. This list is maintained on the list server and updated constantly.

To further enhance the content filter power of the FilterPak, intelligent keywords are used to catch obvious URLs and prevent search engines from searching for offensive terms. The intelligent part of the search improves the accuracy of the content filter by allowing words like “Middlesex , England ” and “breast cancer” while disallowing words like “sex” and “breast”. Though the content filter does not rely exclusively on keywords, they do enhance the blocked-site list, providing a real “one-two punch” in fighting online abuse.